


Hard to Come Back From

by dreamonlosers



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, F/M, Maes Hughes Lives, Secrets, Shapeshifting, Threats of Violence, buttttt gracia dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 05:24:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10713102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamonlosers/pseuds/dreamonlosers
Summary: And she looked at him, her honey-colored hair stained red and sticking to her porcelain white face with her eyes shocked turquoise and blank. So very fucking blank, as if they had never been alive at all. They never crinkled with laughter, welled with tears or widened with surprise. His hands shook as his eyes left her face, traveled down to where the blood was still pulsing out of the deep cut above her right breast. Her green nightgown had torn under the kitchen knife that he then noticed lying next to her, tossed carelessly as if taking her life had been nothing at all.





	Hard to Come Back From

**Author's Note:**

> I saw some of these AUs on Tumblr and read one or two fics, but a lot of them gave no sympathy to Gracia who fucking died. So I wrote my own.
> 
> Also, I used 2003! Envy's voice because it was far more androgynous and fitting to his character

Maes stumbled out of the phone booth, clutching his injured shoulder and cursing aloud. Of all the times Roy couldn’t pick up the phone, this had to be the worst of them all. The dial tone mocked him where he left the phone hanging, bloodied and slick, the operator no longer on the line. He couldn’t waste any more time trying to reach Mustang, and his pursuers seemed to have vanished. The road ahead of him was quiet, the cobblestone chafing under his boots and he was a smart enough man to know that this wasn’t the end.

His mind went back to the woman who first attacked him, her fingernails extending out of her like spears and the tattoo she sported on her chest, right between her breasts. The kind of woman Havoc would like, no doubt. In the darkness of the room, her eyes shone bright and glinted like red wine, even when he lodged the throwing knife into her forehead and blood dripping down her face. She had to be dead, but her presence told him that she wasn’t alone. And if he knew something that he wasn’t supposed to, then he was in danger. 

The streetlight above him flickered and died, its yellow light fading away. He could see his house in the distance with the porch light still on, even with his hazy vision from the loss of blood. Maes had gone the long way home, making sure to throw anyone off his trail even though they could easily follow the crimson splotches on the ground. Tomorrow morning, he would take the first train to Central City with his family, just to keep them close by, and report directly to the Fuhrer. 

Although he wasn’t sure if he wanted to inform or interrogate the Fuhrer King Bradley. He had no idea how high up this scheme went. And to think that he was a part of it, with the time that he spent in Ishval, the time his friends spent in Ishval and all the lives lost as a result of it. With the Fuhrer standing over them on that final day, when Mustang disclosed his plans to Maes, and the congratulations passed around as they retreated from the desert and the celebration that came after it. Thinking about it made him sick.

He pushed the door open to his home and shut it behind him, closing out the last bit of light spilling into the room. Gracia must have gone to bed without him that night – it was five past one in the morning. Not needing the light anyways, he went into the bathroom and found the gauze and alcohol they kept under the sink and started to clean the injuries. He winced as the damp, cool material touched his skin and dripped into the wound, the alcohol burning away any chance of infection and the dirt that must have entered it when he fell. And who the hell knows what the wench had on her nails when she stabbed him.

Maes wrapped the bandage around his bicep and tied it off, then wiped any remaining blood away from the counter. It would worry Gracia even more if she saw it, and god knows Elicia didn’t need to see that as she got ready for preschool in the morning. Anyways, he thought he did a pretty good job at cleaning it while being in the dark, but it would be easier to tell in the morning, after a good few hours of sleep and, well, some light.

Gracia was fast asleep when he crept into their bedroom, lying on her side and facing the wall. The quilt her mother had made for her as a wedding gift was wrapped around her slim body, shielding her from the frosty air that snuck through the cracked window. Maes shut it, locked it, and took off his uniform, hanging the bloody shirt away from everything else. In nothing but his boxers, he crawled onto the mattress and heard it creak under his weight in a way that was familiar, comforting, almost. The same mattress they had bought when they moved in together. 

The warmth of the blankets and the feel of his wife’s body next to him was a reminder to him that, hey, maybe it would be okay. He wouldn’t sleep that night, because every squeak and groan of the house had him wary and alert and ready to grab his gun on the nightstand, but his family was with him. It was selfish of him to think that he’d be okay to die in the presence of his wife and child, if he would be okay with dying at all, but it was one of those thoughts that he would keep very close to himself.

Maes moved closer and placed a hand on Gracia’s chest, knowing she would move hers to meet him no matter how fast asleep she was. Her touch would be cool and light and enough to fend off his nightmares. When her hand remained limp, however, he frowned and slid his hand over his skin, further down her nightgown and jolted when he felt the surface of her chest slippery and wet under his palm. 

“Gracia,” he whispered, his voice riddled with urgency. He turned her over and switched on the lamp. “Gracia, honey?”

And she looked at him, her honey-colored hair stained red and sticking to her porcelain white face with her eyes shocked turquoise and blank. So very fucking blank, as if they had never been alive at all. They never crinkled with laughter, welled with tears or widened with surprise. His hands shook as his eyes left her face, traveled down to where the blood was still pulsing out of the deep cut above her right breast. Her green nightgown had torn under the kitchen knife that he then noticed lying next to her, tossed carelessly as if taking her life had been nothing at all. 

His breath suddenly sounded louder in his ears, time slowing down and the air thickening. If he was saying her name, he didn’t realize it, and it wouldn’t matter at all because she couldn’t hear it.

Maes would never have moved again if he didn’t hear footsteps behind him, approaching the open door to the bedroom. His grip on the pistol was so tight that his knuckles were pale and it wasn’t enough to stop his hand from shaking. He took several gulps of air before turning around, making out the figure in the shadows but he only saw himself, leaning against the doorpost with his baby girl asleep in his arms, facing away from the scene as she was held against his chest. As far as he could tell, she was unharmed, but he didn’t trust himself to think that.

He didn’t trust himself to pull the trigger, however. Maes had enough judgment at that time to know that his aim could be off, he could hurt – kill – his daughter and he had already lost enough. The same went for the throwing knife that was lying on the nightstand.

Instead, he cleared his throat. He didn’t know what to say until he said, “Put her down.”

The creature grinned and it didn’t look anything like his own smile. It was nasty and vicious spread from ear-to-ear, and when he – it – spoke, its voice was unfamiliar. It was deep like a man’s but the throaty drawl was cleverly feminine. 

“I don’t think you want me to do that, Hughes.” It petted Elicia’s loose hair and stroked her back like her father did when she stirred, and Maes wondered how long the monster had been observing them. It knew too much, far too much, and he knew that just by its one gesture. He wanted nothing more than to tear his daughter away from the creature. 

“What the hell do you want?” Maes asked, his voice cracking desperately as he kept his gun trained on the thing holding his daughter, the thing that no doubt murdered his wife. Through his blurry vision, he saw the creature’s grin deepen before it started to shift, dim white light coming off its body and becoming unrecognizable, nothing more than a blob of energy.

Thank any gods that existed that Elicia stayed asleep through that. It was always in her adorable nature to sleep through the loudest and most disruptive things that could happen in a household. It was unnatural, but, god, Maes wouldn’t wish for anything else at that moment. 

It took an androgynous shape that leaned more towards masculine features – narrow hips, flat chest and a square jawline but its features were soft with large eyes and its hair was dark and long, spilling over its shoulders. In the dim light of the lamp, crimson blood was stained onto its abnormally pale right hand and he could make out a small tattoo on its nearby thigh. The same one that the woman had sported on her chest – an alchemic symbol of a snake eating itself. Of course it had something to do with alchemy, they were all freaks – Roy included.

“Keep your mouth shut about what you saw,” it drawled. “You’re a smart man, Hughes. I think you know what will happen if you say anything.” Elicia stirred in his arms, and Maes’ heart dropped.

He nodded, slowly, his arm going numb from how he was holding it. “You could have just told me,” he whispered, not looking at his dead wife behind him.

It only shrugged and smiled. “You need to take us seriously – how else would we do it?”

It was hard for Maes to remain composed and he was already doing a really bad job of it. Tears were already streaming down his face and he sniffed and his voice quivered as he spoke, a hushed whisper. “When you say ‘we’, you mean you and the woman who attacked me at the office? The one with the tattoo?”

God, he was so cocky when he had spoken to her. And now he was sniveling in front of this beast who was so far from human like fire was from water. The beast seemed to enjoy watching him suffer, too.

"I shouldn’t be telling you anything more,” it said. “But, yes – and my sister doesn’t appreciate what you did to her. If she were here, she would have done that to your wife.”

The mental image of Gracia with a knife lodged between her eyes made him sicker than the real thing.

“But I’m classier than that.” Elicia was placed on the ground, gently, like it was making sure that its threat wouldn’t be compromised. “Lucky you – my sister would have made such a mess if she came with me, but she went to a bar instead.”

It took a step back so Maes could move forward and grab Elicia, who was beginning to wake up. He held her on his hip so she wouldn’t be facing Gracia, his gun quickly aimed at the creature again. “Things like you don’t have siblings – you weren’t born.”

“ _Au contraire, mon frère_. Maybe I wasn’t born from a mother like you and the rest of your pathetic kind, but I was still born in every sense of the word.” It walked into the room, to the window that Maes had found cracked, and pushed it open. “Don’t talk about things that you don’t understand, Hughes, and you and your little daughter will be fine.”

Maes, for once, was quiet. The monster pulled itself through the window and waved. He could have pulled the trigger, could have lodged a bullet in its fucking head but if the thing was anything like its ‘sister’, it would only come back and hurt him or the little girl moving in his arms. 

And to make the matter worse, the last thing it said was, “She screamed so wonderfully when she saw me – I really should be thanking you, Hughes.”

A flash of red in his vision and he had grabbed the knife on the nightstand and hurled it at the ugly creature walking away from the window. The knife glinted and then embedded itself into the skin between its shoulder blades. The monster halted in its steps, shocked for just a moment and then reached behind itself and dislodged the blade from its own back and cackled. It decided to keep the knife, storing it in the pocket of its skirt.

Maes Hughes collapsed on the ground, his back pressed to the mattress where Gracia was lying, dead. Elicia was awake but drowsy and not tall enough to see past the edge of the bed so she couldn’t see her mother bloody and deceased. Maes cradled his daughter in his arms and sobbed, burying his face in her hair that was the same shade as his wife’s and she mumbled something that he couldn’t understand. 

It had only been fifteen minutes. In those fifteen minutes, he had found the love of his life dead in the bed that they shared, her inhuman killer approaching him with his daughter in its arms and in the shape of him, and threatened him with her life before becoming itself again and creeping out the window that it had come in by. It left him shattered, all the pressure inside of him suddenly released upon the sight of it all as he was huddled in the bedroom in the earliest hours of the morning with his daughter in his lap, not knowing why her father was so upset but wrapping her little arms around his neck nonetheless in an attempt to comfort him.

And it wasn’t fair to Gracia – she had done nothing to deserve such an early death. So much had been robbed from her, her husband, her daughter, the rest of her life. Her plans to go back to school, studying at home and being with Elicia, meeting up with her friends for midmorning brunch, all those plans had been erased within a matter of seconds. It wasn’t fair to her, it wasn’t fair to Elicia, and it wasn’t fair to any of them.

Several more moments passed and Maes found himself on his feet, Elicia in his arms and facing his chest so she won’t see anything. He carried her back to her room and laid in the bed with her, watching her chest rise and fall as he lulled her back to sleep, stroking her hair and whispering, “Go to sleep, baby girl. It’s going to be okay.”

Then he released her, turning her over and leaving the bedroom. He was terrified to leave her alone, but he needed to get to a phone. Something needed to be done, and no one else but him could be depended on to do anything, so he picked up the receiver and waited for the operator to be on the line. 

“Thank you for calling, who may I –”

“Eastern Command Emergency Center.”

The woman on the other end sounded shocked by the interruption, but said, “Just a moment, please,” and proceeded to transfer his call. It was too late for her to sound so chipper and he wondered if she was a fake person, too.

His speech was monotone, scripted, almost, as he described the situation. As if he was a third party, or watching it on the television. The man on the other end remained calm, with only a hint of nervousness in his tone as he sounded quite young for this job. In a matter of minutes, officials had gathered outside his house and medics were carrying Gracia’s lifeless body away. As he was being questioned, he realized there was only one instance in which he spoke the truth.

“It was my fault.”

And Hughes shattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a kudos or comment your feedback, it helps a lot!


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